An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

particularly the case with the glossary or encyclopedic type of dictionary which
describes the key terminology in an area of interest (for example politics, biology,
applied linguistics) and by doing so defines it. This is what I attempted in my
Glossary of Applied Linguistics
(Davies 2005a), which offers an account of the field
but of course has all the weakness of being only one person’s view. 
2 SOURCE AND TARGET
The urgent question mark against applied linguistics is this: just what is its source,
what exactly is being applied? If the interpretation of applied linguistics is very
narrow so that what is being applied is only linguistics, then because linguistics, like
other theoretical disciplines, deals with idealisations, it appears to have very little to
say about the language-related problems in what we call the real world. If applied
linguistics is interpreted very broadly, then it must concern itself with everything
to do with language. Neither position is tenable. Linguistics, it seems, must play
an important role in applied linguistics but by no means the only role. Applied
linguistics must also draw on psychology, sociology, education, measurement theory
and so on. 
It may be that we shall gain a clearer picture of the nature of applied linguistics
if we turn our attention away from the source (what applied linguistics draws on) to
its target (what applied linguistics equips you to do). The target clearly cannot be
anything and everything to do with language. Corder’s solution (Corder 1973)
was to focus on language teaching, widely interpreted and therefore including, for
example, speech therapy, translation and language planning. Such narrowing of the
target still makes sense today, which is why most of the entries in the 
Glossary of
Applied Linguistics
(Davies 2005a) have some connection with language teaching.
My reasoning is that it remains true that many of those who study applied linguistics
have been and will continue to be involved at some level in language teaching, which
is, after all, the largest profession involved in language studies. This is not to say, once
a language teacher always one: some, perhaps many, of those who engage with
applied linguistics move on to research, administration and so on. But in preparing
the 
Glossary
I have found it helpful to provide myself with this constraint on what it
is we claim as applied linguistics.
What that means is that, while I accept Brumfit’s definition – ‘A working
definition of applied linguistics will then be the theoretical and empirical investi -
gation of real-world problems in which language is a central issue’ (Brumfit 1997b:
93) – I avoid the danger of the ‘science of everything’ position by targeting language
teaching, at the same time recognising that the world of language learning and
teaching is not an artificial world but one that must engage every day with Brumfit’s
History and ‘definitions’ 3
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real-world problems. These real-world problems involve success and failure, ability
and disability, ethical, cultural and gender issues, technology and lack of resources,
the difficult and the simple, and the child and the adult.